My academic career spanned 58 years from the time I first entered college as a freshman in 1950 to the time when I finally retired from the Academy in 2008. I spent the first 21 of those years in the wealthy, selective, exclusive private sector of the enormous American academic establishment: 11 years as undergraduate, graduate student, and instructor at Harvard, three years as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, and seven years as Associate Professor then as full professor at Columbia University. Although I was not uncritical of those distinguished institutions – I called publicly for the resignation of the president of Harvard in 1951, for the resignation of the president of the University of Chicago in 1962, and for the resignation of the president of Columbia in 1968 – I accepted for the most part the general view in society that these academic associations and accomplishments were something of which I deserved to be proud.
Even though I left Columbia in 1971 and turned my back on
the Ivies, I freely confess that I took considerable solace from the knowledge
that I had achieved tenure in the Ivy League at the age of 30. Regardless of
what I went on to do, I thought to myself, no one can ever take that away from
me.
It was therefore with some dismay that I learned years ago that
the execrable Ted Cruz had had a brilliant Ivy League career, first as an
undergraduate at Princeton, then as a Harvard Law School student who went on to
achieve the highest recognition that any American law school student can win,
clerking not merely for an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
but for the Chief Justice himself, William Rehnquist, Jr.
My dismay deepened when I learned that Sen. Josh Hawley, he
of the fist bump, had an equally distinguished academic career, going on from
Yale Law School to clerk for Rehnquist’s successor, Chief Justice John Roberts.
Even so, I thought to myself, two bad apples do not destroy
a harvest. But I admit that my faith in the Ivy League was genuinely shaken by
the discovery that Ron DeSantis, the thoroughly reprehensible governor of
Florida, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
And now, yesterday, comes the news that drives a stake
through the heart of my lifelong sentimental attachment to the Ivy League. Stewart
Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, has been charged with the
very serious crime of sedition by the Justice Department in its ongoing
investigation of the January 6 coup attempt. The news reports focused
understandably on the information contained in the indictment of the role that
this fascist organization played in the events of January 6. But deep in the
story, many paragraphs down, I noticed a passing reference to the fact that Rhodes
is a graduate of Yale Law School.
The time has come for me to stop puffing myself up a bit
with the recollection of my Ivy League triumphs.
However, I can still note with pride that I earned enough
merit badges as a Boy Scout to achieve the rank of Life Scout. Indeed. I can still name the 16 principal points of
the compass in less than 10 seconds, if anyone is interested.
70 comments:
It might have been buried paragraphs down in the piece you read, but in the PBS NewsHour's report of his arrest, it was mentioned in the very first sentence. BTW, J.D. Vance, author of _Hillbilly Elegy_ and Senate candidate, about whom WaPo had a recent story headlined "The Radicalization of J.D. Vance" (which I didn't read), is also a graduate of Yale Law School.
If you put the names you have listed in relation to the millions of graduates who, each according to his own way, live their lives without doing much harm, it is hard to believe that there is a connection between the academic background and the fact that some characters make a negative development.
The evil, unfortunately, is not always the banal.
I know that, Achim. I was just having a little fun.
The bromide that every organization has a few bad apples means just that – that most of the members are not bad. Virtually all of the Supreme Court justices that the bad apples have clerked for were also Ivy League law school graduates, including the liberal justices – Breyer (Harvard); Kagan (Harvard); Sotomayor (Yale); Ginsburg (Columbia); Brennan (Harvard), etc.
And bad apples are not limited to law. Every discipline has bad apples which graduated from prestigious schools. James Watson (undergraduate degree from Harvard) and Francis Crick (Cambridge) treated Rosalind Franklin abysmally, without whose work on crystal radiography they could not have developed the double helix structure of DNA. Yet they gave her no credit. The Unabomber had a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan.
It is, perhaps, a rather mundane observation that there is, unfortunately, no correlation between intelligence and culture and values. There were many cultured, intelligent Nazis, who read Goethe and listened to Beethoven and Mozart. So, the fact that Cruz, Hawley, DeSantis and Rhodes all graduated from prestigious law schools is not a reflection on the quality of the schools. Their values, and lack thereof, were formed long before they attended these institutions. None of this detracts from the merits of your academic achievements.
Aren’t the Boy Scouts the absolute worst of all the listed institutions? :)
Alas yes, but I cling to my childhood accomplishment. :)
To Anonymous...
Sure, the Boy Scouts are horrible.... But in the same arena of evil the Catholic Church is worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0XxyhTRnc&ab_channel=TeamCoco--I went to the restroom at the Fogg Museum at Harvard.
I have some questions for the readers of this blog whose comments have indicated an interest and expertise in international relations.
1. If Russia invades the Ukraine, as is appearing more and more likely, should the U.S. response be limited to economic sanctions, and should a military response be entirely off the table?
2. Does Russia have a legitimate gripe that the West is encouraging the Ukraine to join NATO – doesn’t the Ukraine’s sovereignty allow it to make any decision it wants in this regard?
3. If the U.S. limits itself to economic sanctions, will this be a signal to China that it can invade Taiwan
4. If the answers to 1 and 3 are “Yes,” does it really matter to the security of the United States what the hell happens to either the Ukraine or Taiwan?
John Repko, what a marvelous compilation. You went to the restroom at the Fogg, but I can top that – I was arrested at the Fogg. :)
A quick reply to your four questions: to the first, yes. To the second, legitimacy or illegitimacy of gripes has nothing to do with the question. The United States and Russia are engaged in a power struggle, and each extends the sphere of its influence and control as far as it can, all the while offering rationales that have nothing to do with its decisions. I do not know the answer to the third question, and as for the fourth, what happens to Ukraine or Taiwan has nothing at all to do with the security of the United States and everything to do with its ability to project its political and economic power across the face of the globe.
1) there will be a military response -- by the Ukrainians (who have some weaponry supplied by the U.S.). There shd not be a mil response by U.S. and NATO, unless you're interested in the prospect of a serious escalation poss leading to a nuclear exchange in the absolute worst case scenario.
2) Ukraine as a sovereign state has the right to control its foreign policy. Personally I think it might be wise for Ukraine to say that it would be happy to relinquish any desire for NATO membership if Russia backed off and made clear it was going to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity.
BTW there is evidence that the U.S. made promises to the USSR as it was imploding (or disintegrating) that it was not going to expand NATO to Russia's doorstep, promises that were not kept. A young(ish) scholar named Joshua Shifrinson published the key article on this; you can search on him if interested.
I don't agree w Prof Wolff that publicly stated rationales for foreign policy decisions have nothing to do w those decisions, and I don't think that even Prof Wolff's former colleague the late Hans Morgenthau thought that stated rationales have *nothing* to do w such decisions, though of course there are generally other, unspoken things going on.
Thank you for the above responses to my 4 quesitons.
The following clip followed John Rapko's compilation of Harvard braggarts. Hilarious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7VaXlMvAvk
Let me repost here what I posted to Facebook a few days ago. Since then I finished the book, and I have to wonder how today differs from the 1930s. Perhaps someone could explain to me why Russia should not be considered a Fascist regime, and why it was right for left-wingers generally to oppose Appeasement but we should now take the isolationist view. Yeah, nukes. But does anyone seriously believe that nukes would be used over Ukraine?
----------------
I have begun reading "Appeasement" by Tim Bouverie. I bought it on Kindle quite a while ago, but recent events finally motivated me to actually start it.
It is probably not appropriate to compare Putin to Hitler. But the technique of pushing for what seem like less-than-total concessions, repeatedly, has clearly been emulated. As the Internet meme goes, "lather, rinse, repeat."
Some of my ancestors lived in Ukraine. Mistreatment there probably had as much to do with emigration to America as active desire for the golden land. But that's hardly the point.
The Domino Theory led us to disaster in Vietnam. The question now is whether we believe it's wrong again, and Putin will be satisfied just with swallowing another piece of Ukraine. I certainly cannot claim any expertise sufficient to trust my own answer to that question, and maybe he doesn't even know himself.
I'm very glad the man who clearly relished the taste of Putin's bottom is no longer President.
-----------------
Barney Wolff
James Watson's undergraduate degree is from the University of Chicago. (His doctorate is from Indiana.)
The label isolationist is inapt here. The U.S. has some 60,000 mil personnel in Europe. NATO has 30 (I think) members with a treaty commitment to come to each other's defense. I don't think a mil response by the US shd Russia invade shd be "entirely off the table" bc in these situations you never take anything "entirely off the table." Putin likes to keep everyone guessing but I think the chances of an actual invasion are low. Massing Russian soldiers on the border is a way of signaling to NATO how much Russia does not want Ukraine to join NATO, ever. The U.S. has put some proposals out re limitation of exercises, limit on what kind of missiles will be placed in front line NATO countries, revival of the INF treaty. Russia says not its priorities, but let's wait a little bit and see if the two sides can manage to engage in serious discussions. There's no point in raising questions rt now about whether a military response shd be completely off the table, bc, to repeat, nothing in these situations shd be taken completely off the table in advance. Instead the focus shd be on diplomacy. The term appeasement has a bad rap from the '30s but if you look up the actual definition, it's a fairly innocuous word. We shdnt be throwing around labels and inapt historical analogies but shd be focusing on how to resolve or improve the situation.
LFC,
After I take over the country, I'll going to name you Secretary of State.
You're really good at this. You missed out on your true metier.
Well thks s.w. but I don't think Sec of State is something I ever aspired to particularly.
I think a lot of this stuff is not really that difficult or esp challenging from an intellectual standpoint, though it can be if one gets really deep into the weeds and gets into the quantitative or modeling stuff (which is not my thing). I did happen to spend a long time in grad school, after I'd worked for a number of years, getting a degree in intl relations [after which I didn't find an academic job, though I did a tiny bit of adjuncting which I didn't like] but the pt I'm getting to is that it's not nec to have a whole lot of formal education in the subject to opine reasonably on these matters.
The other thing is that I am often not *completely* sure what I think about some issue so I try to listen to different views when I can. And after that I am still sometimes not completely sure.
If I may ask a personal question, why didn't you find an academic job?
I can see that you are very well read, extremely intelligent and I haven't noticed any serious personality problems (insofar as you can spot that kind of thing in internet and at times you can).
No need to feel pressured to answer if it's a sensitive matter, but if it's not, I'd (and maybe others) would be interested in hearing your take on that.
I'll answer that briefly later today or this evening, s.w., when my computer is turned on. (Rt now am posting on phone.)
Ok. I'm interested in hearing what happened.
So, s.w., I'm not sure exactly how much you know about the academic job market (or markets, plural) in the U.S. and how it works, but I'm not going to go into an explanation of that.
I'll just list some factors that didn't work in my favor (in a highly competitive market). (1) Was older than the typical grad student when I started, hence older than the typical job-seeker when I eventually finished. (This is hard to finesse: you can leave dates off your c.v., but then people will wonder why they're not there.) (2) Degree was not from one of the most prestigious places. (3) Didn't publish any journal articles while a grad student. (4) Diss. could have been on a "hotter" topic. (5) I didn't have the closest of relationships w my advisor. While he wrote me a nice letter -- at least I assume it was nice; didn't ever read it, as they're typically confidential -- he wasn't going to do more than that on my behalf.
I have to take pretty much complete blame for number 3. The others are perhaps somewhat more debatable in that respect. (Anyway, it's quite a long time ago now, and water under the bridge.)
While this may not entirely answer your question to your satisfaction (to do that might require more details and a longer backstory, so to speak), there are limits to how much I want to go into this in a public forum. And I don't think it's of much interest to most readers here.
^Sadly, I'm not sure there's any good reason to seek an academic job these days. Even going to grad school (in something like philosophy, anyway) is a questionable decision, unless done for personal enrichment, and only under circumstances of long-term financial stability; I sometimes wonder about going for another master's in the distant future, provided I'm lucky/dedicated/responsible enough to have everything together.
I guess what I say is less applicable to people who are very well-connected, and possessed of an extraordinary work ethic, resilience, and intellectual stamina. (And few if any of whatever "personality problems" s. wallerstein has in mind, haha.)
LFC,
Thanks. I have a clearer idea of what happened now.
In reply to LFC, I believe the words "appeasement" and "isolationist" are entirely appropriate. If Putin is allowed to bite off another chunk of Ukraine, or obtains a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO and gets his other demands, without paying any price that he finds unacceptable, what other word would apply than "appeasement?"
A claim that neither Ukraine nor Taiwan have any security importance for the US, with the implication that we should not risk military confrontation to save either one, seems to me to be the very definition of "isolationist." I would point out that Taiwan produces many of the chips that go into our computers, cars and military equipment.
Sure, one can make the case that Russia and China should be allowed to do whatever they want in their spheres of influence, because we do so it's only fair. But what happens next, after Ukraine and Taiwan fall? I don't feel qualified to answer that question.
Barney Wolff
I'd say that the appeasement analogy works if NATO agrees not to incorporate the Ukraine in exchange for a promise from Putin not to invade it and Putin invades it anyway. That's basically what Hitler did after the Munich agreement, broke his promise with Chamberlain and Daladier not to incorporate Czechoslovakia into the Reich.
I have no idea whether Putin will keep his word not to invade the Ukraine if NATO agrees not to incorporate the Ukraine, but it seems worth a try, since if he does break his agreement, Putin will then be clearly an international outlaw and "we" can proceed from there.
I'll not opine about China and Taiwan because while I have a certain historical sense of how Russian foreign policy operates (I assume a certain continuity between that of the Soviets and that of Putin), I don't understand the Chinese at all.
Ted Bundy and the BTK Killer were Boy Scouts.
LFC,
Regarding your (1) above, was this something that was ever said out loud to you in your academic career, or is it mostly an unspoken assumption? It seems to me that if someone has a huge gap in their CV between undergrad and grad studies, that just means they decided to spend that part of their life doing something else, and doesn’t betoken any kind of academic deficiency or laziness. What’s wrong with deciding you want to switch careers in midlife? I feel that if two applicants look similar in terms of their accomplishments, it shouldn’t matter if one happened to have spent more time on Earth than the other. Surely to think otherwise approaches a form of age discrimination.
@ Ed Barreras
Mostly an unspoken assumption.
Look at it from a hiring department's standpoint. They've got *hundreds* of applications for one assistant professor job (or, if it's a university or college in a rather remote place where relatively few people want to live or whatever, maybe they've "only" got 100 or 75 or 65 or whatever). The point is they have a lot of applications, they have to winnow them. If they see that candidates X and Y have similar credentials on paper, but X -- based on dates of the undergrad degrees etc. -- is younger, that's likely going to weigh against Y. Because they want someone they hope will have a long career at their institution. No one is going to say precisely that out loud, bc age discrimination is illegal, but it's bound to factor in, I would think. That doesn't mean that older candidates are never hired, I'm sure some are, but other things being roughly equal, it's a negative.
P.s. That said, I'm not saying -- b/c I really don't know -- that that was any kind of determinative factor in my search, which, as I mentioned above, occurred *quite* a long time ago (and wasn't as exhaustive as it might have been, though I don't particularly think the results would have been different if it had been). Btw, I originally had applied to an MA program, and when I was offered a place in the PhD program I should have thought harder and longer before I accepted the offer.
I think this will be my last comment on this topic in this thread. Because this blog is read or at least visited by something like 1,000 people a day (according to what Prof Wolff has said), I also don't esp want to give out my email address here. If this were an obscure blog with daily visits in the range of 15 to 20, I would give my email address and people who were interested in more details about my academic "career" etc or just wanted to discuss the broader subject in general could email and we could have a private conversation. But because this blog is not obscure and gets 1,000 visits a day, I'm not inclined to do that, b/c frankly for the most part I don't know who is reading and who the anonymous commenters are. Call me silly, but that's my feeling about that.
I just finished playing chess with a Russian.
During the game I messaged: “Please ask President Putin not to invade the Ukraine. It could cause WWIII.”
S/He responded: “After death, we are going to heaven. You are going to hell.”
I replied: “Really? Not very Christian of you.”
S/He responded in Russian. I said, “I cannot read Russian.”
S/He replied: “Are there any Christians left in the U.S., or only transgender people? Learn Russian soon, it will come in handy.”
S/He continued: “Come to us if you are normal. There is more democracy and freedom in Russia than in the West.”
So much for chess diplomacy.
P.S.: Bad news. I lost on time. Damn. As my clock ran out, I messaged: “Have a good day.”
I think I have no illusions about the power and interest policy of the so-called "West" towards Russia after the collapse of the USSR. I have personally experienced the arrogance and ruthlessness of West German politicians and managers towards East Germans in the post-1989 era. The mildest thing that can be said about the West's policy towards Russia between 1992 and 2010 is a mixture of arrogance, ignorance and selective perception. Many opportunities (perhaps unique opportunities) for Western Europe and Russia to come closer together were lost.
But that is water under the bridge. Putin and his autocratic government have long been convinced that the West (EU, NATO, USA), as a solid image of the enemy, is more valuable for the preservation of their own power than an economic cooperation that would not have enabled Russia to stand at eye level with the West for decades. The combination of an external enemy and a strong internal identity myth currently guarantees Putin and his regime a better and more reliable hold on power than the vagaries of economic growth. Ukraine and its capital, Kiev, play a central role in this identity myth. Kiev and Novgorod are to this Slavic-Russian identity myth what Mecca and Medina are to Muslims.
Putin will therefore weigh what he invests in his project of regaining Soviet greatness, which includes Ukraine, but also the Baltic states, which are already part of the EU and NATO. One must be blind if one does not recognize the roadmap that has the stations Crimea, Donbass, Kiev. And the question that must be asked, and that is asked much more intensively by Lithuania, Estonia in Latvia is "where is the terminus of this roadmap in Putin's brain?". There should be no illusions about the fragile democratic movement in Belarus. As soon as Lukashenko falls, Putin will be there.
Thus, more than the question of China vs. Taiwan depends on the reaction of the NATO states to the threats or to an actual invasion of the Donbass or the wider areas of Ukraine. If negotiations with Putin fail and Russian troops really attack and occupy Ukraine, economic sanctions will hardly be enough to stop him. It will probably have to be a complete economic blockade of Russia rather than a minimal non-military response.
The thing Putin fears more than NATO is actual democracy. Ask the ghosts of Napoleon and Hitler what invading Russia in Winter is like. The saber rattling over NATO expansion and border security is mostly a red herring. The pertinent strategy should IMHO,is to stem the slide of democracy in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, and strengthen it in Ukraine, while making a concerted effort to support the fledgling democratic movement in Belarus. Surrounding Putin with democracy, rather than guns or missiles, is the more effective long game.
Pardon the brief interruption to note that there are probably several people here who would get a kick out of Wordle. It's free, no download required, could be a great addition to your daily crosswords and such - highly recommended to fans of Scrabble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordle_(video_game)
Another Anonymous (14 Jan 10:19),
I don't have expertise in international relations, but I have a few comments.
(1) Are you not aware that unilaterally imposing economic sanctions is an act of war?
(2) Why is it wrong to kill civilians with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons but not wrong to kill them with economic sanctions or embargoes?
(3) If Ukraine feels that to defend themselves they must use all resources available, including neo-Nazis fighters, should the US be providing military support, including funds and training, to Ukraine in that effort?
(4) Has anyone actually looked at a map of where US military bases are located in the world and where Russian military bases are located? (And, for that matter, where Chinese military bases are located?) Or looked at how much the US spends on military technology and personnel annually compared to how much the rest of the world spends?
Does it really make any sense that the US should be so afraid of the rest of the world and need to spend so much of its resources preparing for "defense"? If anything, shouldn't the rest of the world be afraid of the US?
(5) How much of the expenditures on "defense" are really just money transfers to weapons manufacturers (and to politicians and government officials who hold investments in weapons manufacturers, who receive large donations from them, and/or who plan to work for them after leaving government)?
(6) Why are you calling Ukraine "the Ukraine"?
Eric,
Let me first say that I posed the questions in a neutral manner, requesting information and viewpoints from those readers whose knowledge and expertise in international affairs is, admittedly, greater than mine. You are posing questions in a rather antagonistic manner, as if I had taken a stance on the questions I had posed. I hadn’t, as demonstrated by my last question, regarding whether it even mattered to the security of the U.S. if either the Ukraine or Taiwan was invaded.
That said, here are my responses to your questions:
1. Economic sanctions are not a unilateral response. It is a response to an act of aggression initiated by another country, in this case Russia, and is far less harmful than the use of military force in terms of the loss of life and injuries.
2. Because death by chemical and nuclear weapons is of a greater magnitude, more certain, and more painful than the deaths which may be caused, but not definitely caused, by economic sanctions.
3. I don’t know what you mean by “neo-Nazi fighters.” I have not seen reports that the Ukraine depends on large numbers of such fighters. I would imagine in every army there is a range of political views among its members.
4. The scope of the span of U.S. military baes is an outgrowth of both the end of WWII and the cold war, in which the Soviet Union did present a threat of a policy of global hegemony, i.e., its invasion of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. The army bases are established as a buffer against the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
5. I won’t dispute that there is a large degree of waste in U.S. military defense, as well as graft. But it is no worse than that in Russia, and graft is a part of life of most nations. This does not detract form the right of the U.S. to defend itself form Russian aggression, even if it is limited to economic sanctions.
6, Here’s your answer, from the internet:
“Why do they call it the Ukraine?
In the earliest years it appeared without the definite article 'the' but in this century the definite article increasingly preceded the name Ukraine. ... many Ukrainian immigrant scholars, due to their imperfect knowledge of English, used the form 'the Ukraine' in their books thus helping to perpetuate this usage.”
In closing, I find it rather astounding that you are even asking these questions, which are symptomatic of a closed mind.
Another,
Really!!
Did the Soviet Union invade Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and East Germany or did it occupy them as part of the war against Hitler? It kept control over them as the U.S. kept control over West Germany, Italy, etc. Was the Soviet control more heavy-handed than the U.S. control? To be sure, but post World War 2, the Soviet Union was not an aggressive power.
s. wallerstien,
Give me a break!
The U.S. did not install governments in the countries which it liberated from the Nazis. The Soviet Union imposed "communist" regimes in all of the Eastern European countries it "liberated." Moreover, have you forgotten how brutally the Soviet Union crushed the rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia? Please, don't respond that the U.S. did the same in Chile. Although I do not approve of what the U.S. did in Chile via the CIA, we did not send troops into Chile.
If you study what happened in European countries with strong Communist parties, Communist parties which played a huge role in the anti-Nazi, resistance, such as France and Italy, you can see that the U.S. manipulated, corrupted and bought their way to "friendly" non-communist governments.
No, the U.S. did not invade Chile, but they invaded Panama, Grenada and the Dominican Republic (post World War 2), provided air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion and armed
the Contras against the Sandinistas. They also trained all Pinochet's Chilean torturers in the so-called "Escuela de las Americas" in Fort Benning, Georgia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation
However, in Europe in general the U.S. applied carrots, while the Soviet Union applied the stick to maintain control. Remember that post World War 2, after the Nazi invasion, the Soviet Union didn't have many carrots to hand out.
s. wallerstein,
You will use every possible distortion of history and rationalization to reinforce your bias against the United States. Given the Soviet Union's evident policy of world hegemony, the United States' actions in Latin America to forestall the Soviet Union's intervention into the Western Hemisphere were viewed as self-defense. Even the Russian chess player I engaged with earlier this morning told me I should learn Russian, because it will come in handy.
Also this:
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/01/11/class-action-suit-filed-against-top-private-colleges
Play Putin at his own game. Psy Ops. Go dark; stop talking in public and leaking documents. Putin requires a public audience. Just go silent, offer to open back door negotiations and then say nothing further in public. Let him sweat and guess. What is the sound of one saber rattling?
AA, the errors were in viewing every leftist movement as an existential threat and in supporting rightist regimes regardless of their brutality and corruption as a bulwark against the International Communist Conspiracy (tm).
RE: I called publicly ... for the resignation of the president of the University of Chicago in 1962
What did you have against George Beadle?
aaall,
Is Nicaragua better off under the rule of Daniel Ortega than it was under the rule of Somoza?
The Russian chess player I referred to in a comment above told me that there is more democracy and freedom in Russia than in the West, generally. I doubt that anyone who reads this blog believes that.
So, aaall, my question for you is, do you believe that the Russian government is a totalitarian regime, and has been for several decades? If your answer is yes, do you believe that the U.S. government, with all of its flaws and blemishes, is also a totalitarian regime? My answer to the first question is Yes; my answer to the second question is No.
Therefore, to address the issues you raise in your comment above, if the Russian government is a totalitarian regime, and its predecessor the Soviet Union was also a totalitarian regime, and the U.S. is not, and has not been, a totalitarian regime, why wouldn’t the U.S. be justified in resisting Soviet/Russian intervention in our hemisphere? In each of the struggles you refer to, the Soviet Union played a significant role in supplying arms and funds to the rebels/revolutionaries. Given what has happened in Nicaragua, where one totalitarian regime = Somoza’s – was replaced by another totalitarian regime – Ortega’s – why would it not be in the interest of the United States, which is not a totalitarian regime, to resist the intervention by a foreign nation with hegemonic ambitions, from getting a foothold on its doorstep? Why would it not, justifiably, prefer the totalitarian regime of Somoza, who had no hegemonic ambitions, over that which the Soviet/Russian government was seeking to replace with its own form of totalitarian regime?
Now, you and s. wallerstein, and others are likely to say that the U.S. is/was doing the same thing in other countries on the border of the former Soviet Union and present Russian government. There is a significant difference, however. The military bases which the U.S. has in Germany, in South Korea, etc., are not there seeking to overthrow the non-totalitarian governments which already exist there. The U.S. is not seeking to replace those non-totalitarian governments with totalitarian regimes, which is precisely what the Soviet Union/Russian government has been seeking to do in Latin America. Under these circumstances, I believe that the U.S. has had legitimate and justifiable cause to oppose the revolutions in those countries, subsidized by the Soviet Union/Russia, when the end result would not be any better than what they already had.
Last night 60 Minutes had a segment devoted to the question of who betrayed the location of Anne Frank’s family to the Nazis. Several years ago a retired FBI agent whose expertise was in analyzing cold cases was retained by a Dutch documentary producer to use his detective skills to answer this question. He organized a team of specialists – computer analysts, a psychologist, Dutch police, and historians – to try to find the answer to this question. After years of data analysis, the FBI agent and his team focused on one individual – a Jewish member of the Dutch Judenrat, who, in order to save his family provided the addresses where Jews might be hiding out. He did not know who the Jews were; he just provided the addresses. On what basis did they conclude this? They originally thought that the individual and his family had perished in a concentration camp. After an exhaustive search of all of the concentration camp records, they could not find any reference to the individual or his family. They ultimately found that he had continued to live in the open in Amsterdam, and died in 1950. The only explanation for how he could have continued to live in the open without being arrested was that he had traded his information to the Nazis in order to protect himself and his family.
The FBI agent and the producer of the documentary were concerned that disclosing this information would foster further anti-Semitism – that it would expose Jews to age old tropes about treachery and disloyalty. They consulted a rabbi about this concern. The rabbi disagreed, indicated the truth should be disclosed, because it demonstrated the inhumane choice which the Nazis put Jews to, to betray their own in order to survive.
Why am I raising this, and what does it have to do with the above discussion about international relations and the power struggle between the United States and the former Soviet Union and the present Russia? Because it demonstrates that in the real world in which we live there are bad actors who use their power to force others to make horrible choices in order to survive, choices which make those forced to make those choices look as bad as them. The bad actors are not limited to individuals who wield immense power. They also include nations and countries which force other nations and countries to make difficult, and unseemly, choices in order to survive. And the former Soviet Union, and the current Russian regime, is such a bad actor. The current Russian regime is a totalitarian government, which, contrary to my Russian chess playing adversary, is not a democracy; does not conduct free elections (even by the current standard of elections in the U.S.); suppresses free speech; and sends thugs into other countries to kill its critics using lethal nerve agents. No one who reads this blog who has engaged in criticisms of the U.S. economy and the U.S. government, if given the choice, would choose to live in Russia instead of the U.S. In Russia, you could not engage in criticism of the Russian government comparable to your criticism of the U.S. In order to survive against the Soviet Union/Russian ambitions for world hegemony the U.S. has had to make choices in international relations for which it has been subjected to criticism for favoring dictatorships in, for example, Latin America, against revolutionaries armed and subsidized by the Soviet Union/Russia.
(Continued)
In some cases the strategy which the U.S. has used has backfired. The U.S. has used poor judgment, in hindsight. But in no case has the U.S. acted with a motive for world hegemony, contrary to what such critics as Noam Chomsky expostulates. In Korea, for example, the U.S. came to the aid of South Korea after the conclusion of WWII when Russia, which had installed a communist regime in North Korea after expelling the Japanese, reneged on a pledge to the U.N. to hold free elections in the Korean peninsular to determine whether the entire peninsula would be ruled by the communist regime installed in the North, or the democratic regime supported by the U.S. in the South. After the elections were canceled, North Korea troops invaded South Korea, in an effort to obtain my military force what it could not obtain at the ballot box. President Kim Il Sung went to Moscow to obtain Stalin’s approval before launching the invasion, culminating in the Korean War. Even today, Russia continues its hegemonic aspirations, threatening to invade the Ukraine, and installing troops in Kazakhstan and courting Belarus, both of which are totalitarian regimes.
Russia, with its hegemonic aspirations, puts the U.S. and the West to the same choice that the Nazis put the Jews - forcing them to make choices in order to survive that they would not otherwise make, thereby subjecting them to criticisms of expansionist objectives that are not accurate. The U.S. and the West have erred on occasion, but the errors have been errors of misfeasance – errors in judgment – unlike the intentional acts of malfeasance by Russia.
Oops. Another Anonymous exposed. Well, most of you knew his identity anyway.
AA
Two brief points.
First, you are committing the same kind of mistake that got the U.S. mired in Vietnam, which one scholar summed up under the heading 'the neglect of local circumstances'.
Second, there's a difference between run-of-the-mill dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. This is not pedantic hairsplitting but standard political science. Recent years have the seen the emergence of regimes somewhere in between democracy and autocracy, which two scholars (Levitsky and Way) have called 'competitive authoritarianism'.
The Ortega regime in Nicaragua is definitely not a democracy, not even prob competitive authoritarianism, and has, from what I can tell as a non-specialist in the region, been bad for the country, but it poses no threat to U.S. national security. (It may play a role in worsening the immigration crisis but that is a somewhat separate question.)
You talk about Russia's hegemonic aspirations. The phrase is unhelpfully vague. Putin knows he can't recreate the Communist bloc in E Europe bc those days are over, and a main concern now shd be the right-wing regimes in places like Hungary and Poland, not friendly to Russia, but hardly exemplars of liberal democracy, human rights, and welcoming attitudes toward immigrants.
LFC,
Ortega may not present a thereat to the U.S. now, due to the break-up of the Soviet Union. But when he was engaged in his rebellion, he was being provided weapons and financial support by the Soviet Union, and, but for the break=up, would have presented a threat of extending Soviet influence into other Central American countries. The point I am making is that Ortega has not increased freedom in Nicaragua any more than Somoza did, and if the Soviet Union had not broken up, he would be seeking to expand the communist form of totalitarianism to other Central American countries, whereas Somoza was content to just exercise his authoritarian control only in Nicaragua.
Putin may have receded from the former Soviet Union’s hegemonic objectives, but he has not done so entirely. Witness his threat to invade the Ukraine, his installation of troops in Kazakhstan and his support of the authoritarian regime in Belarus. The U.S. has no control over the elections (and there were elections) in Hungary and Poland, and has no plans of sending troops into either country in order to improve their democracies, as deficient as they may be.
Ortega at this stage isn't a communist at all. He's made deals with all the big business elites in Nicaragua as well as with the Catholic Church (anti-choice). He's just a corrupt authoritian (not totalitarian) strongman much as Somoza was.
I think Sudo Nym, above, made a good point re surrounding Putin w genuine democracies, not a regime like Orban's in Hungary, which holds elections but can't, from the limited knowledge I have, be called democratic. Plenty of places have elections and go through certain other motions but also repress a free press and independent judiciary, hobble the opposition, and take other steps to hinder the alternation of governments as would occur in an actual democracy. This is the point of Levitsky and Way's category of competitive authoritarianism. Levitsky and Way didn't come up w this just to show they're smart and clever or to get tenure. They already have tenure. They came up with it, I suspect, because they realized that existing categories were not adequately capturing reality and perhaps also because they were tired of reading comments on blogs that assume incorrectly that there are only two basic regime types: democratic on the one hand, authoritarian (or in the extreme case totalitarian) on the other.
LFC,
I was not assuming that “there are only two basic regime types.” I am fully aware that there are a number of variations and permutations of governments covering a broad spectrum of possibilities. My point is that it is the most totalitarian of the regimes, which have expansionist objectives, which present the greatest danger to democracies, and which force those democracies to make unsavory choices in order to survive. The authoritarian governments of Hungary and Poland do not present such a threat, as deplorable as those governments are.
Another,
I recall having this same argument with you previously, but if you read Thucydides, you'll see that democratic Athens was much more expansionist than authoritarian Sparta.
So France and Great Britain, both relatively democratic, were very expansionist during the 19th century and democratic U.S. has often been as expansionist and more than the authoritarian or even totalitarian Soviet Union.
Since we've argued about this previously, I'll not answer your answer. Cheers!!!
"(5) Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping."
The notion that the Soviet Union could do much of anything in the Americas in the mid-1980 is unrealistically optimistic. Decades of stagnation as well as being bogged down in Afghanistan would argue against that being much of a thing. Cuba was a drain; adding a new gaggle of actual client states wasn't likely and if attempted would have been ruinous.
The above quote was from George Kennan's Long Telegram back in the 1940s. Had we heeded it we might have used better judgment then to consider Soviet hopes and wishes an existential threat in every instance. There were more Titos then toads.
China had been headed mostly downhill since the Tang Dynasty but too many serious people lost it in 1948. Instead of evaluating each case, anti-communism became a religion and the domino theory something to be taken as a given. Eisenhower and Dulles helped get rid of Mohammad Mosaddegh and Jacobo Arbenz. How did that work out? Weeding commies out of the Indonesian domino also got rid of pesky socialists and liberals because Islamic fundamentalism was never going to be a problem.
And, of course, we got our very own Leninist movement courtesy of Bill Buckley and his merry band of ex-Reds (condensed version). Keynes had an interesting take:
https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/A_Short_View_of_Russia.htm
(Ignore the then "class-respectable" anti-Semitism. Recall university quotas and real estate covenants in the USA.)
s. wallerstein,
You can ignore this response if you wish, but “democratic U.S. has often been as expansionist and more than the authoritarian or even totalitarian Soviet Union.” I contest your version of history. Can you name any annexation of another country by the U.S. which compares to the Soviet Union’s annexation of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany? The closest you may come was the annexation of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American War. But in terms of acreage, the Soviet Union’s military annexations far exceeded that of the U.S. Are going to claim the U.S. annexation of Native American territory is the counter-example? Once again, you are allowing your anti-U.S. bias to distort history.
aaall,
George Kennan was the architect of the containment policy which he recommended be implemented by President Truman. This does not square with what you have written.
this is pathetic. The Soviet Union never "annexed" (your word) any of the countries you list. They did annex the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. There are three examples in favor of your argument, but let's be serious.
AA, his concept of containment was far more nuanced then the sky-is-falling, we live in a world full of dominoes irrational response to any third world revolutionary movement. A Euro-centric response to Soviet imperialism was rational. Iran was about oil and Guatemala was about bananas. Vietnam and Indonesia as well as Nicaragua and El Salvador was about elite buy-in to ideological/theological anti-communism.
You should read the whole Long Telegram if you haven't. Kennan had his issues but he did oppose Vietnam and other excursions.
Back in the day folks like Dr. Fred Schwartz used to tour the country. His Christian Anticommunism Crusade's camp meetings played in prime time in Los Angeles and I assume in other cities. For reasons, I remember Truman firing MacArthur and headlines/stories about Joe McCarthy/Who Lost China? and commies everywhere. Your mileage may vary.
(BTW, this runs deep. I had a paper route and one of my customers was a teacher in a local district. We talked politics from time to time. Stanley Mosk was running for AG and his bumper stickers came up. Their lettering was somewhat novel and if one squinted, vaguely Cyrillic. To her this was part of the brain washing to acclimate us to our Russian masters. Sentiments like this were not uncommon. Then there was the Black List.)
Like anyone who wrote a lot, Kennan was not completely consistent in his written pronouncements. But he opposed what he called the militarization of containment. Anyway, there's no contradiction betw his definition of containment and the statement that we shdnt "allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping." His definition of containment was kind of vague ("the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting...points"), and he believed, to paraphrase and then quote Menand, that he was proposing a policy of selective confrontation not "a state of global military preparedness."
Views about his overall influence and role in the early Cold War differ. Perry Anderson took a very negative view, from the left, in a piece from six or seven years or so ago, but Anderson was prob somewhat too harsh, I think. More favorable assessments are easily available. Some of his personal political beliefs were not attractive, but that's not worth going into rt now.
P.s. posted the above before seeing aaall's reply on the topic.
Ummm, AA, the U.S. did annex half of Mexico back in 1848, Jackson was a genocidal maniac, and just about every treaty with Native Americans was violated if the incentive was there - and then we had the Dawes Act.
In political discourse there is an analogue to the reductio ad absurdum argument in logic, which proves that one or more of the premises must be false, since the conclusion is absurd, like 1=2, or black = white. The analogue in political discourse is to rebut a proposition about world affairs by offering counter-examples that split hairs and are not correlated to the proposition.
For example, in order to counter my general proposition that the hegemonic aspirations of the Soviet Union during the Cold War compelled the United States and its allies acting in self-defense to engage in unsavory tactics which subjected them to criticisms of being anti-democratic, s. wallerstein contends that the Soviet Union did not, technically speaking, annex Poland, or Hungary, or Romania, or Czechoslovakia, or East Germany, since it only imposed authoritarian Communist forms of government on their people, without officially declaring that it was “annexing” them; and then, when large segments of those populations rebelled against these Communist regimes, it sent military forces into those countries to quash the rebellions, killing thousands of Hungarians and Czechs in the process. But still, this did not , technically speaking, constitute an annexation.
And in rebuttal of the claim that the United States did not engage in comparable “annexations” to those perpetrated by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, aaall offers as a counter-example that in 1848, 100 years before the Cold War, the U.S. annexed half of Mexico - which is not accurate, since in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded the territory in question to the United States in exchange for a payment of $15,000,000. But who’s quibbling.
In political discourse, folly doth often prevail, for if it did not, its advocates would accuse its detractors of being anti-intellectual.
You claimed above that democratic countries are not as expansionist as non-democratic ones. I pointed out the examples of democratic Athens being more expansionist than authoritarian Spart and of democratic 19th century Britain being very imperialist.
I then claimed that in the 20th century the democratic U.S. was often as expansionist or more as the Soviet Union. Expansionism is not just annexing other countries, but controlling them through military and other non licit means, let's say.
The Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe and attacked Afghanistan. By the way, contrary to what you say above, North Korea did not attack a democratic South Korea, but rather a South Korea governed by Syngman Ree, an authoritarian rightwing dictatorship. That does not justify the attack of course.
Now during the same period, the Cold War period, the U.S. attacked Viet Nam, Cambodia, Granada, Cuba (air cover during the Bay of Pigs), was involved in military coups against democratic governments in Chile, Argentina and Brasil, not to mention the horrid massacres after the coup in Indonesia, all of which were ways to expand its power and control.
So at this point we're more or less tied in questions of expansionism between the two superpowers. It seems that superpowers, whether democratic or not, try to expand their control over other countries. I'll leave it at that.
I left out above the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, which left several thousand dead Dominicans.
s, wallerstein,
Arguing with you about the United States foreign policy in relation to the Soviet Union is a fool's errand. Athens? Really? Sayonora.
"...Mexico ceded the territory in question to the United States in exchange for a payment of $15,000,000. But who’s quibbling."
" Oh, nice little country you have here, be a shame if something happened to it. This is my offer, take it or leave it."
Lets see: ~$28/sq.mi. for the Mexican Cession while a few years later, negotiated under different circumstances, the far smaller but same totally priced Gadsden Purchase went for ~$500/sq.mi. Given that with a wheelbarrow, a pick, and shovel one could just scoop silver up in parts of Nevada and California turned out to be golden...
Then there was the annexation of Hawaii. BTW, back in the day California was flat out genocidal towards the indigenous population.
But all that is besides the point. Nations tend to do what is in their perceived self interest regardless of how beastly they then behave. Given that Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Romania were in the Tripartite Pact and (save Bulgaria) had actually waged war on the Soviet Union, it was hardly surprising that Stalin was determined to create client buffer states. Stalin certainly wasn't going to treat occupied enemy nations better then he treated Russians. Czarist Russia was a land empire, the Soviet Union was a land empire, and now Russia seems to be going there again.
What AA doesn't seem to get is that outside of the Marshall Plan, Korea, and NATO our military adventures to contain perceived Soviet adventures (and later Islamic threats) were wrong headed and counter-productive. This was seen by many in real time. They didn't prevail and the bill is now due.
“[O[utside of the Marshall Plan, Korea, and NATO … “ Indeed. More knee-jerk anti-U.S. sophistry. Can you name any other country in history which undertook to restore the economy and infrastructure of a conquered nation anywhere comparable to what the United States did in the Marshall Plan? If we are going to go back to Athens, as s. wallerstein proposes, did Scipio Africanus rebuild Carthage? Did the Soviet Union rebuild Warsaw or Budapest, without requiring that they ben to the Soviet authoritarian will? “Nations tend to do what is in their perceived self interest.” Similar to the argument that altruism is not real, because even altruists are acting int their perceived self-interest. And paying less than something is worth, as in the cessation of Mexico, is not the same as annexation, regardless how many hairs you split. Let/s face it – there are many commenters on this blog who would never concede that the United States is a more just and democratic nation than Russia, Syria, Cuba, etc., and that its actions in self-defense are legitimate and justified given the Hobson’s choices which its enemies confront it with. None dare call it specious folly, for if it be folly, intellectuals could not possibly endorse it.
Correction:
Cession of Mexico, not cessation. I am not a Trump supporter.
"...and that its actions in self-defense are legitimate and justified given the Hobson’s choices which its enemies confront it with."
Not sure what is meant by "Hobson’s choices" (perhaps some examples?) but the Anglo-American sponsored coup that gave us today's Iran and the American-UF coup (along with our '80s adventures) that gave us today's Central America clearly weren't self defense and there were serious arguments asserting that back in the day. We can also lump many of our other adventures from Vietnam and Indonesia back to the Siberian AEF and forward to Iraq and Afghanistan in the same category.
You seem unwilling to accept that as beastly the SU and PRC were (are), generalizing that into opposition to every legitimate beef that folks in the third word had with European and American colonial enterprises wasn't justified.
Of course the US and Western Europe are more just and democratic but what you fail to understand the opening that the irrational anti-communism of the 1940s and 50s in this nation gave to a Leninist Right that now is on the cusp of ending that just democracy.
I fail to see how picking and choosing based actual analysis is "knee-jerk anti-U.S. sophistry?" The Marshall Plan was directed at many European nations (not just the Axis) and recognized the problems that arose post WWI. Stalin chose his strategy and we chose ours and ours was better if human welfare is the standard.
Applying the same standard, some of our other policies in other parts of the world were seriously deficient. What's the problem with making distinctions based on facts?
Oh, and if I dangle your first born over a cliff and hand you a quick claim deed, a pen, and a dollar would you call that a fair negotiation on a level playing field? Annexation with a fig leaf is still annexation.
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